Candidates with student government experience were elected to executive positions in graduate and Downtown campus student governments, while outsiders won at the West campus after election results from all four campuses and the Graduate and Professional Student Association were announced Thursday.
Criminology junior Joseph Grossman, the incumbent Undergraduate Student Government Downtown president, earned 63.42 percent of Downtown votes, beating leadership and nonprofit management sophomore Erika Green.
The elections follow a season full of violations on the Downtown campus.
Green was disqualified Monday night after failing to list a whiteboard used by her campaign on her expenditures report, but the USGD judiciary board overturned this disqualification early Thursday morning.
The board said the complaint did not explain how Green not listing the whiteboard afflicted the Grossman campaign.
Grossman faced three violations, each of which were dismissed by the USGD Elections Committee.
Current GPSA Vice President of External Affairs and anthropology graduate student Rhian Stotts earned a narrow victory of 587 votes over law student Chase Rasmussen’s 560, narrowly beating Rasmussen for the presidential seat.
Rasmussen, along with vice presidential candidates and law students Amanda Fischer, Scott Adams and Daniel Hutto and several GPSA Assembly candidates, were initially disqualified for not attending assembly meetings, but were permitted to run again following an ASASU Supreme Court hearing on March 26.
Fischer will be the new Vice President of Internal Affairs, while counseling psychology graduate student German Cadenas was elected Vice President of External Affairs, and communication graduate student Megan Fisk was elected Vice President of Professional Development.
Undergraduate Student Government West results were equally close.
Political science junior Luke Webster earned 283 votes to political science sophomore Zeke Reed’s 267 to become the new USGW President.
Webster said he was looking forward to bringing ideas from both campaigns to students.
“I want to take a look at some of the things Zeke was looking at during his campaign,” Webster said. “He’s a smart guy, and he said some things we’re interested in working on.”
USG Tempe and USG Polytechnic both had uncontested elections.
Finance and computer information systems sophomore Mark Naufel won the USG presidency, while Jeffrey Hebert is the new USGP president.
Interdisciplinary studies sophomore Brianna Pantilione, who will serve as vice president of policy under Naufel in Tempe, said it was a relief to have the formality of elections behind them.
“We’re just really excited to get going and get out in the open about our plans,” Pantilione said.
All four campuses also passed an updated version of the universal constitution the Downtown, West and Polytechnic campuses passed last semester.
Only 843 students voted in Tempe USG elections this year, while several thousand voted in each of the past four years. In comparison, 1147 students voted for GPSA, which typically has a turnout of only a few hundred.
Nearly 500 students voted in both USGD and USGW elections, and more than 200 at USGP.
Reach the reporter at julia.shumway@asu.edu or follow @JMShumway on Twitter.
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